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Writer/Columnist

Category Archives: Special Days

Today is National Nude Day!

No nude sunbathing? Where’s the fun in that?

For the record…I’m out. The festivities for National Nude Day will have to proceed without me. Let’s just say my precarious relationship with my archenemy, Aging, has left me feeling…well, vulnerable, with all my loose parts and stray appendages prone to getting caught in slamming doors, closing windows and heavy machinery if not properly corralled. I am the first to admit it…this glorious 50+-year-old package now requires the elaborate gift-wrapping that is clothing.

Before Aging had her way with me (in more ways than one), I was already a bit squeamish about letting it all hang out due to a genetic defect from my paternal side of the family. According to my mother, who had no reason to make things up, in four and a half decades of marriage to my sainted father, she never once saw him buck-naked. (Thus the “sainted” part.) I suspect that through the years Mother sneaked the occasional snips and glimpses of those things my father kept under wraps. Engaging her vivid imagination, I have no doubt she had a pretty good idea what the entire parcel that was my father looked like.

I hope everyone enjoys National Nude Day. As for me, I won’t be the one mooning the server at the window of the local Burger King. I’ll leave that to you.

Medieval “Typo” Results in International Day of Foolery

Chauntecleer, Chaucer’s psychic cock.

Can you believe it? The worldwide custom of playing pranks on your friends and family on April 1 actually has its roots in Chaucer’s TheCanterbury Tales, which dates back to the early 1390s. As the tale goes, the cocky cock, Chauntecleer, dismisses premonitions of his own death only to be tricked by a cagey fox whose main objective was securing another delicious chicken dinner. (You would have thought Chauntecleer would have learned a lesson when the wily fox ate his dear old mom and pop, but that fact evidently slipped his pea-sized brain.) A physic chicken and Colonel Sanders’ original original recipe aside, the adoption of April 1 as the international holiday for ticking-off your loved ones with your obnoxious adolescent practical jokes may have resulted from a 14th century typo (a.k.a. copying error.) Instead of Chaucer’s mention of “March 32” meaning April 1, modern scholars believe his passage meant 32 days after March, or May 2.

Think about it! The next time you covertly place a fake dog poop pile next to your granny’s rocking chair, (definitely grounds for being disinherited) you could have been yelling, “May 2nd Fool!” On the other hand, I don’t think that would have caught on.